President Donald Trump said Monday he is drafting an executive order that would bar the use of mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines before the November 2026 midterm elections, pledging to “lead a movement” to replace them with water-marked paper ballots counted by hand. In a lengthy post on his social-media platform and subsequent remarks at the White House, Trump called mail voting a “fraud” and claimed, without evidence, that the United States is the only country still using the practice. “We’re going to end mail-in voting — it’s a fraud,” he said, adding that existing voting machines are “very expensive and seriously controversial.” Mail balloting is widely used across the country. Roughly 30% of all votes in the 2024 general election were cast by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the share exceeds 80% in states such as Arizona. Republicans encouraged supporters to vote early and by mail in 2024 after losing ground on the method in 2020. Election-law scholars said any order that seeks to override state rules would almost certainly be challenged in court because the Constitution gives state legislatures, subject to acts of Congress, primary authority over the “time, place and manner” of elections. A separate Trump directive issued in March to tighten mail voting was blocked by a federal judge in June. While some Republican allies applauded the plan, Democrats and several state officials condemned it as an attempt to suppress votes. Critics also noted Trump’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin had questioned the security of mail ballots during their recent meeting, a comment likely to intensify partisan scrutiny of the proposal.